Pineapple is one of those foods that are really well suited for dehydrating. They are easy to prepare and get super sweet when they’re dried. Great for snacking or putting in trail mix, granola, breads, etc. I’m sure you want some, so here’s how you do it.
First, get a pineapple. Or two or three. I just had one. If you’re doing two or three, you’ll want to wash your hands frequently as you’re cutting them or wear gloves as they are highly acidic and it will start burning your hands.
Peel, core and slice your pineapple. There are tools for this, but I just use a knife. If I did a lot of pineapples, it would probably be worth getting the peeler/corer tool. I cut the top and bottom off, then cut the peel off, then cut it in half from top to bottom, then cut each half in half (so the whole pineapple is quartered), then cut the core section off each quarter. Then I cut each quarter in half again before I started cutting the chunks. You can make your pieces whatever size or shape you want. If they’re all close to uniform thickness, they’ll dry more evenly.
Now, put your slices on the dehydrator tray. Pineapples have such a high acidity that there is no need to pre-treat them with fruit fresh or other stuff. In fact, I’ve used pineapple juice as a pre-treater for other fruits before. Not perfect, but it preserved color better than just drying them without dunking in pineapple juice.
I dehydrated the slices with the blueberries since I had extra trays available. 135 degrees about 16 hours in my Excalibur dehydrator. They were crispy. If you don’t want them crispy, just check them more often than I did and turn the dryer off when they’re at the chewiness you like.
They come off the trays nicely. Put them in whatever you’re storing them in. Hide them from the snackers or leave them out and let them get eaten. Yes, that’s the whole pineapple in that pint jar minus about 6-7 chunks we snacked on before I got the picture taken. Strange but true. Dehydrating is like magic. Yummy magic.
Keep preparing! Angela
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Looks great! I think I'll pick up a few this weekend and give it a go!
We really like doing pineapple.
SO TAISTY……
Thanks for the great blog…
i am going to use this !!!
My college roommate introduced me to this 21 years ago, and we still love it! It doesn't last long, however, so we'd recommend doing several pineapples if you can find them for a good deal.
Sounds like a great idea…. question tho… how well do they rehydrate? I understand that you can eat them as chips, but short of canning, I was curious if dehydrate/rehydrate was an option…
I've never tried to rehydrate them. We just eat them plain or throw them in trail mix dry. I suppose you could if you wanted to use them for baking or whatnot, but I doubt they'd rehydrate to the same "pineapple" texture. I'll have to soak some up and find out.
Can I dehydrate canned pineapple instead of fresh ?
Judy, I’ve never tried canned pineapple. The end result will be a little different since it’s been processed, but you should be able to do it.
I used canned pineapple and it came out very similar to glace, or candied pineapple. Didn’t last for more than 2 days because it was eaten as a snack by the men of the house.